Dark Intent by Brian Reeve Read Free Book Online

shining in the light, they screamed pitifully, their high-pitched cries slowly devolving to pathetic whimpering, the noise of the condemned.
    Shozi was as if in a trance and started chanting, urging the bizarre show on, gyrating his body rhythmically in the dance of death. The others joined in, waving their pangas in the air, delighting in a ritual they had seen before. Swaying in concert, the men with the paraffin drenched their victims until their clothes were stained and the oily fluid clung like glue to their skin and short wire-brush hair. In a last flurry to save himself, invoking tenuous threads of strength, Thomas charged at the circle of men, his fuelled movements fanned by the deepest craving to survive.
    As he neared the pe rimeter he lowered his head, an attacking goat, selecting a spot between two of the men, and charged. His move was unexpected and a metre from his goal he felt he could get through. But their reactions were as sharp as surgical steel and they converged, grunting excitedly, enjoying the exercise before the meal, the agony of the boys before them. As a coordinated unit they tripped him up, expertly taking him to the ground, his greasy face forced into the sand. With practiced ease they locked his arms behind him, causing him to cry heretically and threw him into the centre of the ring. Ephraim went to his brother’s side and lovingly held his head above the dirt, no longer thinking about his own safety. His brother was going to die.
    Bored by the foreplay, Shozi stopped his chanting and came into the circle. From point-blank range he fired his gun, the lead striking Thomas and Ephraim in their knees, breaking and splintering, turning the legs into useless sticks. They shuddered but could not cry any more, holding one another instead with brotherly love, resigned to the horrifying death that was to come, a dispensation from Satan himself.
    Stuffing the Webley into his belt, Shozi looked at Setlaba. The tall lieutenant went to him, reaching into one of the pockets of his shorts for a box of matches. He lit two and flicked them in turn onto their victims’ clothes, grinning savagely when he saw the flames leap, engulfing the youths all at once in the unbearable heat, scorching their young features in a crackling frenzy.
    Shozi and his men did not stay to see the corpses reduced to charred remains and with the fire devouring its feast he led his band off, going to the grass and up the hill. Behind him was quiet, the neighbours, whatever they saw, not daring to resist and further incur his wrath.
    Mrs Mkhize, the bedroom locked, knew when she heard the last screams of her sons that they were dying, the most recent act of murder by Shozi. She wept in gasps as if retching into a bucket, the misery and torment too much to bear.

Chapter 12
     
    Moses Shozi’s house
     
    Moses Shozi lived nearly three kilometres from Mrs Mkhize’ s home on flat land in a double-storied house. It overlooked a running stream and kopje that in the rugged magnificence of its huge boulders, shear in places like an alpine face, was incongruous on the grassland. When he and his loyal file reached his stronghold, an hour after slaughtering Mrs Mkhize’s sons, he went inside, telling Setlaba to dismiss the men and send them to their rooms, a white-washed abode across the yard from the house.
    The house was worthy of no name, rectangular with a gabled roof of terracotta tiles. There were three bedrooms upstairs and a lounge and kitchen below. It was sparsely furnished but Shozi chose to have it that way, preferring to save the money he made from running shebeens and gambling dens in the townships.
    After placing his panga and pistol on a chair the gangster went to the kitchen and took a bottle of beer from the fridge, popping the cap and injecting a copious quantity of the liquid down his throat. He seated himself at the table, placing the bottle on the synthetic surface.
    Setlaba entered, thirstily contemplating the beer but